ecosophia | Discursive Meditation: Phase 1

I mentioned here a little while back -- I think it was in the process of winding up the discussion on the Sphere of Protection -- that sometime shortly I'd be doing a comparable series of posts on the second core practice of traditional occultism. Yes, that would be discursive meditation, and I plan on spending the next several weeks going over the technique and talking about how to use it.

Let's start, though, with a couple of details that tend to be forgotten. First of all, there's nothing particularly exotic or, ahem, Asian about meditation -- though of course most Asian spiritual traditions teach it as a matter of course. So did most Christian churches until not much more than a century ago. For a change, this isn't something that got dumped at the time of the Scientific Revolution, when so much of the Western world's spiritual heritage hit the dumpster in a hurry; this got dropped in the late 19th and very early 20th century, when most denominations discarded their remaining methods of personal spiritual practice and embraced notions of spirituality that focused on collective salvation, either by sheer faith and nothing else (the fundamentalist approach) or by charitable works (the social gospel approach).

So we're dealing with something that used to be practiced by people all over the western world. (The word "meditation," remember, didn't have to be imported from some exotic language; it's from Latin, the normal language of educated people in the West until 1850 or so.) That's the first thing to keep in mind. The second is that what we're talking about is different in a crucial way from the kinds of meditation that were imported from Asia in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Nearly all of those latter methods focus on silencing the thinking mind; classic Western meditation doesn't. Instead, it focuses and directs the thinking mind. That's implicit in the word itself. When we say a crime was premeditated, for example, that doesn't mean that the perp chanted a mantra or practiced mindfulness meditation before doing it; it means that the perp thought it through, planned it, and deliberately decided to do it.

Western meditation -- to give it its proper name, discursive meditation -- is focused, deliberate, reflective thought. A subject for thinking -- a theme, in the standard jargon -- serves the same role in discursive meditation as a mantra or what have you in other kinds of meditation. You focus your attention on it just as intently as on any other kind of meditation -- but that means you think about it, keep your mind and your thoughts on it, explore it, and understand it. In later posts in this series we'll talk about how that works and why it's so important. For now, let's start with the first step, which is posture.

Let's start with posture. No, you don't have to tie your legs into an overhand knot to practice meditation, and in fact for the kind of meditation we're doing, you don't want to do that. The posture to use is the one shown above in those fine Egyptian statues of Sekhmet the lion-goddess. Sit on a relatively hard chair; if it has a back, slide forward, so you don't touch it at all, and your spine is free. Your feet rest flat on the floor, your knees and hips are at right angles, your hands rest palm down on your thighs, your head is straight. Look forward and down, as though at something on the floor a few yards ahead of you. Breathe slowly and easily.

(If you're already practicing the Sphere of Protection, do this in the space you've just cleared with that ritual. Set the chair in the space before you begin, and get used to doing the ritual around it. More on this later.)

Got it? Now don't move for five minutes. Don't fidget, shift, wiggle, scratch an itch or anything else. Leave your body completely still for five minutes by the clock. Do this once a day. That's your assignment for the next week.

Unless you've already done this, or practiced certain other exercises that have the same effect, this is going to be much harder than you think. Our bodies are actually full of tensions and discomforts we never notice, and part of the constant shifting and wiggling and fidgeting that most people do most of the time is a matter of trying not to notice just how uncomfortable we are. Confront it head on. Stay still for those five minutes, no matter what. You'll still probably be having some trouble at the end of the week, but at that point we can go on and add something that will make it even worse. ;-)

That's one of the secrets of meditation. It is literally the most boring, grueling, frustrating thing you will ever do -- and once you get the hang of how to do it and why it's important, you'll do it every day, because the payoffs are worth so much more than the boredom et al.

Five minutes a day sitting in the posture shown above. Got it? Go for it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For those of us who are used to tying our legs in overhand knots, is there a reason to switch to sitting in a chair?

I, for one, find the lotus position quite comfortable and stable.

Yes, there's a reason. The lotus posture and related positions are meant to close off your body's interaction with the earth energies by turning the soles of your feet upward. That's important in those Asian systems of spiritual practice that focus on cutting your ties to the world of manifestation. In most Western systems of practice, by contrast, the goal is to be able to mediate between the spiritual and material worlds, and so your body needs to be connected to both sets of energies -- the solar current, to use Druid jargon for a moment, through the crown of the head held upright, and the telluric current, through the soles of the feet pressed gently against the ground.

Still, it's up to you which posture to choose.

Interesting! I'd been doing tailor-fashion or seiza, due mostly to early martial arts training and a lack of chairs. :) Now I have chairs, so I'll try out this way!

From what I've read, in Asian systems it is Muladhara (the Chakra at the base of the spine) that is responsible for the grounding function and for handling telluric energies. The reason why the feet Chakras are less important seems to be that, although those Chakras merge into one when the feet are kept close to one another, the energy flows up from the ground in two separate Nadis, or channels, along the legs and only meets at the base of the spine. Additionally, the energy that flows up through the legs is still telluric and gets 'processed' only in Muladhara. It's as if the feet act only as connectors and can be by-passed when Muladhara is in direct contact with the ground, as it is when you sit on the perineum.

I am carried to think that in Western systems the importance of the feet is due to the prominence in cultures originating from that part of that world of the standing figure (the cross, but also the Vitruvian Man). In fact, if we look at the correspondences between the Chakras and the Sephiroth of the Tree of Life too, the second Chakra, Swadhisthana is clearly linked to Yesod (both corresponding to the genitals), while Muladhara (base of the spine) is linked to Malkuth, which is located traditionally under the feet. So, it seems that below Yesod/Swadhisthana there is a 'system' of which different traditions exalt different parts.

I am also aware that this difference, being primarily symbolic, is critically important since it is culturally mediated. So, presumably, if one chooses to meditate in an 'Eastern' position and feels adequately grounded and in contact with the telluric energies that should be fine/safe. Similarly, if someone mediates as part of a spiritual path, he/she is surely better off following the instructions as given in that tradition as they are moulded on the right symbolism.

One question, if I may, JMG: is it correct to assume that telluric energies are stronger when sitting on the ground, rather than - say - on a chair in an apartment on the fourth floor? Or, again, the physical dimension is relatively unimportant and it's the symbolism that matters?

Thank you
-GA

It actually seems like in celtic times people were using a style of sitting very much like what in Buddhism is known as the Burmese posture.
See here (there is a figure sitting on the top of this thing. the animation is a little tricky)
https://www.keltenwelt-glauberg.de/keltenwelt-digital/schnabelkanne-digital/
and also see here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cernunnos#/media/File:Gundestrupkedlen-_00054_(cropped).jpg
in the first case archeologists do not seem to know exactly who is depicted. Could be some priest, a druid or a god. In the second case is Cernunnos, which as far as I can tell is not much more than a label. But it seems probable that this kind of posture actually indicates that there was a celtic meditative tradition which we lost, and that they figured out similar tricks for stable sitting like the Buddhists did...

Just out of interest, are there any traditional sources that recommend sitting in a chair? The only tradition I am aware of working like this is Daoism, but my knowledge here is limited.

Discursive Meditation: Phase 1

Question on Posture

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